Quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett, raised on a farm in Upper Darby,
Delaware County, Pennsylvania, regularly hid runaway slaves and
assisted as many as 3,000 fugitives in their escape. A
significant portion of the thousands of fugitives
who gained their liberty with Garrett's help were Marylanders, and
it is said that he "concealed their flight so skillfully that slave
owners
usually gave up the chase when they learned that their runaways had
fallen
into his hands."1 The
Maryland-Delaware
border was the threshold of the "Eastern Line" of the Underground
Railroad (the eastern most region of the Underground Railroad,
encompassing
Northern Delaware and the Southeastern Pennsylvania region).
Garrett, along with the help of local Underground Railroad "conductors"
such as Maryland-born
Harriet
Tubman, William
Still, and John Hunn, took full advantage of this
geographic
positioning. The Choptank River, which originates at the
Maryland-Delaware
border, provided fugitives from Maryland's Eastern Shore with a route
north through Delaware. The Nanticoke River, which also flows south
from
Delaware,
could be followed from a number of Eastern Shore counties.2

Garrett grew up around the farm that his Quaker family owned.
Around 1813, Garrett returned to his home to
find his family upset at the kidnapping of a free black woman who
worked
at the Garrett home. Garrett pursued the kidnappers, and at this
point it is believed that he encountered one of the many terrible evils
of slavery. He retrieved the woman, and from then on, he
dedicated his life to the abolitionist cause. After moving to
Wilmington,
Delaware with his first wife, Mary Sharpless (later, she died and
Garrett remarried Rachel Mendenhall), in 1820, Garrett joined
the
Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. He
attended
their meetings, which were not far from his Wilmington
home.
Over time, Garrett would come to help Harriet Tubman on her many
journeys,
giving her food, clothing, shelter, and money, "which she never spent
for
her own use, but laid up for the help of her people, and especially for
her journeys back to the 'land of Egypt' as she called her home [in
Maryland]."3 Garrett wrote of
his friend Tubman in his letters of correspondence regarding the
Underground
Railroad, detailing her many trips
through the streams and cold weather and her long distance treks
in wet clothes. One letter recounted: "Harriet, and one of the
men had
worn
their shoes off their feet, and I gave them two dollars to help fit
them
out, and directed a carriage to be hired at my expense."4
Garrett had a large shoe business, from which he supplied
runaway
slaves with a new pair of shoes on every trip. Tubman herself is
known
to have passed through his office at least eight times on her journeys.5

His most renowned case of providing aid through the Underground
Railroad
came in 1845, when he helped the Hawkins family -- from Queen Anne's
County, Maryland --
to freedom. Garrett paid a high price for this act, but the
tribulations
he endured ultimately elevated his reputation as a successful conductor
on the Underground Railroad. Samuel
Hawkins was a free black man who worked and owned his own home in
Queen
Anne's County. His wife, Emeline
Hawkins, remained a slave of her long-time master Mr. James
Glanding, but lived with her husband. During Emeline's
enslavement by Mr. Glanding, she and Samuel had two sons,
Chester and Samuel. Later, the couple had four more children,
while Emeline was enslaved
by Elizabeth N. Turner, her owner at the time of her flight. For
a
period
while Emeline was enslaved, the slave owners
allowed close contact between all of the family members, even though
they
were spread out at separate times between various residences as the
children
worked on separate farms throughout the Beaver Dam's section of Queen
Anne's
County. When James Glanding died in 1839, the couple's oldest
sons
were given to Glanding's son, Charles Wesley. In the 1840 Census,
the entire
family is listed as a free black family, although the oldest
sons were unquestionably the property of Charles Wesley Glanding at
that
point. At the time of flight, the couple's six children, Chester,
age sixteen, Samuel, age fourteen, Sally Ann, Washington, and two
others
(one age eight and the youngest age eighteen months) were all
living
in Samuel's house, although some remained enslaved. It is clear
that
Samuel had attempted to purchase his wife's freedom for years, but to
no avail. After his offer to purchase his family was rejected in
1845, Samuel had had enough, and decided to solicit the help of Thomas
Garrett
to help his family escape bondage in Maryland. They did this by going
through a free black
Underground
Railroad conductor, Samuel D. Burris, of Delaware.

Prior to 1845, Thomas Garrett successfully smuggled hundreds of
slaves
from Maryland up to and through Pennsylvania. In November of
1845,
with the help of Burris, Samuel Hawkins and his family fled the Eastern
Shore with hopes of reaching Garrett on the other side of the Delaware
border.
Burris first got the Hawkins family to the home of a black friend of
his
in Camden, Delaware, where four black male slaves met up with the
group.
A Quaker named Ezekiel Jenkins gave the group, now totaling thirteen, a
letter to present to Daniel Corbit, John Alston, or his cousin, John
Hunn,
at the next town. Traveling through a snowstorm, the men walked
the
twenty-seven miles, while Emeline and the children rode in the wagon as
Samuel drove it. On a December morning in 1845, after battling
the
weather, the wagon and the men walking beside it finally arrived in six
inches of snow at the Middletown, Delaware, residence of John Hunn, a
Quaker
who partnered with Garrett and the Underground Railroad in Delaware.
There
they handed Hunn the letter from his cousin. They were asked if
they had they stopped
by either Corbit or Alston's house, and they responded that they had
not.
From traveling through the snow, they all had frostbite, and according
to Hunn, "One man, in trying to pull his boots off, found they were
frozen
to his feet...Most of them were badly frost-bitten from walking through
the six inches of snow."6 At
Hunn's home the
slaves were fed and cared for, and some of them rested in the
barn.
Underground Railroad helper William
T. Kelley wrote about Hunn, "In my day it has been more to John
Hunn’s
labors and preaching that the Underground Railroad was kept running
through
Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland than to any other person."7

As they made their way, a neighbor watching the group became
suspicious and approached John Hunn's house, looking all the while
for the slaves, but not telling Hunn of his notions. This
neighbor
reported the group to the Constable of Middletown, Richard C. Hays, who
arrived shortly afterward, along with assumed slave hunters William
Hardcastle of
Queen Anne's County, William Chesney, Thomas Merritt, Robert A.
Cochoran
and his son, Robert T. Cochran. Simultaneously, a search party
from
Maryland moved closer in the pursuit of the family, who lay settled in
the
barn of an Underground Railroad helper, awaiting Hunn, who was
preparing
breakfast. The men presented a runaway advertisement valuing the
slaves at $1,000, and demanded they be handed over.
The story, as follows, was related in the Underground Railroad website,
"Whispers of Angels": "Samuel, concealed in the barn but guessing that
he had been found out,
attempted to run from the barn and was observed by the search party.
Doubling
back again, perhaps to gather his family to flee, Samuel was cornered.
Brandishing a knife, Samuel stood threatened by the Constable (who had
a rifle) until John Hunn insisted that each give up his weapon in order
to spare Samuel. Samuel produced his legal papers from Queen Anne's
County
declaring his freedom, whereupon the party determined them to be fakes.
After one of the men in the party attested to the fact that Samuel was
free, but that he was being accused of absconding with several slaves
in
his family, it was decided that everyone must appear before a
magistrate
in Middletown, Delaware to settle the matter. At the magistrate's
offices, one of the men from the Maryland search party drew Samuel
aside
and promised him that, if he gave up his two older sons, he would be
allowed
to proceed north with his wife and family without them. Samuel agreed
and
Hunn, in spite of serious misgivings, wrote to his wife to bring forth
the rest of the family. When the family arrived, they were all taken
into
custody and brought to New Castle. The man had lied to Hawkins."8
The
family broke down into tears when Samuel and his two oldest sons were
put
in handcuffs. The captors took the entire family.

The four men who had originally met up with the Hawkins family
remained
at John Hunn's home while the others were taken in. They
continued
on the trail to freedom, leaving at about nine o'clock at night along
with
Burris, on their day-long journey to Garrett's hardware and iron store
in Wilmington.
With them, they took a letter from John Hunn written to his friend
Thomas
Garrett, detailing the events that had taken place. Garrett
accepted
the men into his store on that 18th day of December, added four tally
marks
to his count of fugitives aided( as he always recorded to present at
antislavery
meetings) and sent them on their way. After midnight, Thomas
Garrett
was asked by the Sheriff of New Castle and his daughter, both of whom
were
opposed to slavery, to meet at the jail to help resolve the
situation.
Garrett contended that in New Castle, Hawkins and his wife assured him
"that themselves and four small children were entitled to freedom; that
himself and wife had been keeping house and living together as free
persons
previous to the birth of the eldest of the four children."9
By this point, the slave hunters had been forced to retrieve a legal
document,
which caused them to leave town, during which time the Sheriff released
the Hawkins family into Garrett's custody. Garrett, along with U.
S. Senator John Wales, had the party taken before the Chief Justice of
Delaware, Judge Booth, and the result of this meeting was the release
of
the slaves on a writ of habeas corpus.
Although Garrett's lawyer advised him to refrain from seeing the
Hawkins family to avoid punishment himself, "he refused and was ready
and dared to
encounter any risk for himself, so that he could insure the safety of
those
fleeing from bondage."10
Garrett
paid a hack, or an unlicensed taxi, $1.50 to take the entire
Hawkins family to the front of his
iron, steel and coal store in Wilmington.
After a brief stop at Garrett's home, the Marylanders were taken to
Wilmington by a wagon Garrett had prepared. They eventually escaped to
freedom.
Long after the Hawkins family had been sent on their way, Constable
Richard
D. Hays returned with the new documents, only to learn that the slaves
had been sent off. Samuel Burris returned on that Tuesday with a
letter to John Hunn from Thomas Garrett that read, "My joy on this
occasion
was great, and I returned thanks to God for this wonderful escape of so
many human beings from the charnel house of slavery."11

Six weeks later a suit, incited by James A. Bayard, was
filed against Garrett and John Hunn, claiming that the entire Hawkins
family
was enslaved, that Garrett had violated the Fugitive Slave Acts, and
that
they assisted four other adults from Maryland who ran away from their
owners.
The proceedings were held at the United States District Court in New
Castle, Delaware
before Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney (who eight years later presided
over the Dred Scott Case in the United States Supreme Court) and Judge
Willard Hall during May Term, 1848. Bayard, who would go on to
become the U.S. District Attorney for President Martin Van Buren and a
state
Senator,
represented the prosecutors, while U.S. Senator John Wales represented
the defense. There were six cases in all, the hearings beginning
Wednesday, May 24 to Monday, May 29. According to William Still,
the
proceedings were not public prosecutions or indictments, but civil
suits
instituted by the owners of the runaway slaves, who employed and paid
counsel
to conduct them.12 Thomas
Garrett and
John Hunn were convicted by a jury of slave-owning farmers. The
jury
awarded even heavier damages than the plaintiffs claimed.
According
to Underground Railroad helper William T. Kelley, the judgment "fined
them
to the extent of every dollar they possessed in the world."13
Charles Glanding sued Garrett for debt, and won a judgment for
$1,000. Elizabeth Turner sued Garrett for debt, and won a
judgment
for $2,500. Glanding also sued Garrett
for trespassing for $2,000, but damages awarded $1,000.
Elizabeth Turner also sued him for trespassing for $5,000, but assessed
damages of $900. In the end, Garrett
was assessed a total of $5,400, while Hunn was assessed
a total of $2,500. At the close of the
trial, Thomas Garrett made an hour long speech, during which he
professed
in the very room where he was convicted that he would continue his
efforts
to help fugitive slaves gain liberty, even more so from that point
forward. He stated, "Friend, I haven't a dollar in the world, but
if thee knows a
fugitive who needs a breakfast, send him to me."14
Garrett's words were so effective that "at the conclusion of his speech
one of the jurors who had convicted him strode across the benches,
grasped
his hand, and begged his forgiveness."15
William Still wrote, "Mr. Garrett kept his pledge and redoubled his
exertions.
The trial advertised him, and such was the demand on him for shelter,
that
he was compelled to put another story on his back buildings. His
friends helped him to start again in business, and commencing anew in
his
sixteenth year with nothing, he again amassed a handsome competence,
generously
contributing all the while to every work in behalf of the down trodden
Blacks or his suffering fellowmen of any color."16
Of
the Hawkins family, John Hunn said that they "went from Wilmington to
Byberry
(Pennsylvania), and settled near the farm of Robert Purvis," a member
of
the Pennsylvania Antislavery society. The next generation went on
to
live in that same neighborhood, under the name of Hackett.17

Thomas Garrett remained very active in the smuggling of fugitive
slaves
out of Maryland, as the publicity from this trial made the location of
his and John Hunn's houses even more well known for Marylanders on the
run. On October 3, 1847, Garrett wrote a letter to his
"respectable
friend", David
H. Hall, in correspondence regarding an attempt to purchase the
children
of a Prince George's County, Maryland, slave Garrett had helped escape
from
bondage. However, the owner, "Pumphrey" refused to sell the
children unless
the mother was to return to work for him, even as a free woman.18
In
a December 26, 1855 letter to William Still, Garrett referenced George
Wilmer,
a Maryland slave who assisted him in forwarding runaway slaves across
the
Maryland border into Garrett's care. Within a four month span,
Wilmer
was responsible for passing some twenty-five slaves from Maryland
toward
freedom through Garrett.19
By 1860, Garrett had been so effective in luring away the human
property of Maryland
slave owners that on January 17 of that year, Maryland Delegate C.W.
Jacobs,
of Worcester County, proposed a resolution in the Maryland House of
Delegates
to encourage the imprisonment of Thomas Garrett if he returned to
Maryland.
Jacobs presented to the House information about the twenty-fourth
anniversary of
the American
Abolition Society meeting held in New York in May of 1857, in which
Garrett was
in attendance. He reported that various abolition societies in
and
outside of the United States had raised $196, 912, which was used as
a bounty on runaway slaves, "to decoy them from their owners, and
induce
them to run away."20 Jacobs
continued,
"The said sum of $196, 912, bestowed upon said Garrett in May, 1857,
and
his large annual receipts per capita, for every slave he can so steal,
has made him rich in wealth, and marked him as a wicked base traitor to
man and God. And whereas, most of the slaves so stolen by said
Garrett,
belong to the citizens of this State, whose rights of property the
State
is sacredly pledged to secure inviolate; therefore, Be it resolved, by
the General Assembly of Maryland, that the Treasurer pay, upon the
order
of the Comptroller, the sum of ----- dollars to any person or persons
who
may secure said Thomas Garrett in one of the public jails of this
State,
and that the Governor of this State, on information of such fact, is
hereby
requested to employ the best legal ability of the State to prosecute
said
Garrett to conviction and punishment."21
Jacobs stated that at the anniversary in New York in May, Garrett
showed
by his record that he had assisted 2,059 slaves to freedom via the
Underground
Railroad. Later, at a meeting of abolitionists in Philadelphia in
December
of 1859, Garrett confirmed he had assisted another 386 slaves since the
1857 anniversary, altogether totaling 2,445 slaves. On the day
following Jacobs announcements in the House of Delegates proceedings, a
resolution was read for
a second time. Jacobs proposed the sum of $2,000 to cover
the undecided amount of compensation for Garrett's capture.
Alexander
Chaplain of Talbot County proposed $5,000. David W.
McCleary of Allegany County proposed $500.22
The Maryland Senate heard the resolution on
the following day, January 19, and referred to the Committee on
Judicial
Proceedings.

Whenever Thomas Garrett went a period of time without hearing from
or seeing
his
friend, Harriet Tubman, he would send a letter to William Still to ask
Tubman to stop by his store the next time she was in Wilmington.
In October of 1856, after Harriet had been gone for a while, likely on
one of her freedom trips, she came into Garrett's store and went to the
back counting house to see him on her way back south. Tubman told
Garrett, "God has sent me to you for money," to which he replied, "Thee
know I have a great many calls for money from the coloured people, and
thee cannot expect much money from me." Harriet said, "You can
give
me what I need now...God never fools me."23
Garrett later reported that Harriet asked for the exact amount of
money
they had just sent him for the antislavery cause. Garrett asked,
"Has anyone told thee I had money for thee? She replied, "Nobody but
God".24
Amazed by this, Garrett gave her the money and she went on her
way.
In November, Tubman returned to South Wilmington with four slaves from
the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Josiah
"Joe" Bailey, William "Bill" Bailey, Peter Pennington, and Eliza
Nokley, each
running towards their dream of freedom in Canada. After they
received help in Maryland from Samuel
Green, -- a man who was later put in prison for possessing Uncle
Tom's
Cabin after advertisements for his capture claiming as much as
$14,600 surfaced all around the Eastern Shore of Maryland
and Delaware -- Harriet reached out to Garrett to help them get across
the
Market Street Bridge and into Wilmington. Garrett was very much
concerned
that everyone would be watching the bridge, as it was a frequent
crossing
point for fugitive slaves on their way north. Garrett thought up
a plan, likely turning to an Irish worker and stable owner near the
bridge,
not far from Garrett's home and store. Garrett
and the Irish man arranged for two wagons of bricklayers to leave town
the next morning, singing and shouting as was normal. After dark,
they came back signing and acting drunk, this time with six slaves
under
the straw in their wagon as they arrived at the checkpoint. The
police
did not bother to check, and a day or so later, on November 18, William
Still made an entry in his account book: Josiah and William Bailey,
cash,
$3.25, Harriet Tubman, $2.50.25
A
letter came to Oliver Johnson at the Anti-Slavery office in New York
saying
that the Maryland slaves had made it to freedom in Canada. On
March
27, 1857, Garrett wrote William Still of his concern for Harriet Tubman
after her passage with Joe Bailey and the rest of the group, "I have
been
very anxious for some time past, to hear what has become of Harriet
Tubman.
The last I heard of her, she was in the State of New York, on her way
to
Canada with some friends, last fall. Has thee seen or heard
anything
of her lately? It would be a sorrowful fact, if such a hero as
she,
should be lost from the Underground Railroad."26

Over the years, Garrett would continue to write letters detailing
escapees that he assisted in flight. On
February 5, 1858, Garrett wrote a letter to William Still announcing
the
successful quest for freedom of six more slaves from Maryland.
Garrett
paid one man three dollars to transport the fugitives fifteen miles,
and
paid
another man two dollars to feed them on the way. The six slaves
were
Plymouth Cannon, a forty-two year old, "withal possessed of shrewdness
enough to lead double the number that accompanied him", one of six
slaves
of postmaster Nat Horsey of Horsey Cross Roads, who left his wife,
Jane,
and his children Dorsey, William Francis, Mary Ellen and baby; Horatio
Wilkinson, age forty-four, one of twelve slaves of Thomas J. Hodgson,
who
cautioned his slaves that "Canada is the meanest part of the globe that
I ever heard of" in an unsuccessful attempt to deter any consideration
of
flight;
George Henry Ballard, age twenty-six, owned by the deceased William
Jackson,
who left his mother, sister and one other family member in bondage
because
he felt his owner's death would mean his sale; and the brothers Lemuel
Mitchell, age thirty-five, who had "a head indicative of determination
of purpose, just suited to an Underground Railroad passenger, owned by
James R. Lewis, John Mitchell, age twenty-four, owned by Mrs. Catherine
Cornwell of Viana, and Josiah Mitchell, age twenty-three, also owned by
Thomas J. Hodgson.

After years of Underground Railroad activity, at the age of
eighty-one,
Thomas Garrett died on January 24, 1871 of a bladder disease.
William
Lloyd Garrison, among other prominent abolitionists, reached out to
Garrett's
family in sympathy after Garrett's death. His funeral was
described
as a phenomenal interracial event. There was reportedly a 1/2
mile long line of blacks and whites trying to get into the meeting
house where it was held.
Thomas Garrett was carried to his grave by black men. Over the
years,
Garrett's friends often advised him to go into hiding outside of the
country
so that he would not be put into prison for his actions. In
response,
Garrett joked that he had not yet been kidnapped by the
Marylanders. Celebrations took place around the
country after slavery was abolished, and when the Fifteenth Amendment,
giving blacks the right to vote, was later
passed. Wilmington was no different. A newspaper reported,
"It seemed
as if the wholed colored population of the state was turned loose in
Wilmington
to celebrate."27 The procession
of black Wilmingtonians made its way to Garrett's house, where he was
roused and placed in an open carriage with a wreath of natural flowers
thrown over his shoulders. "No man in the country has done more
for
the poor and oppressed, both black and white, than Thomas Garrett,"28
the newspaper account concluded. Garrett reflected,
"No labor during a long life has given me so much real happiness as
what
I have done for the slave."29

This information resource of the Maryland State Archives is presented here for fair use in the public domain. When this material is used, in whole or in part, proper citation and credit must be attributed to the Maryland State Archives. PLEASE NOTE: Rights assessment for associated source material is the responsibility of the user.